Where The Wretched Are Growing Wings
by Nozomi
Summary: A collection of 13 short drabbles to commemorate Friday the 13th, one a day from October 1st to the 13th. Each one is inspired by a song in my Supernatural fanmix by the same name, which can be found on my livejournal. Some Wincest. SamDean.
1. Devil Woman

\\_I drank the potion she offered me  
I found myself on the floor  
Then I looked in those big green eyes  
And I wondered what I came there for._\\

They meet her the first time when they're digging for information in the library. She's a librarian, very friendly, very helpful. The first thing Dean thinks when she strolls up to them with a cheerful "May I help you?" is _You can certainly help **me**_.

Both she and Sam give him a look when he immediately voices the thought. _What?_ he mouths, shrugging at them. Dean Winchester is not known for keeping things to himself. She smiles winningly at Sam when he apologizes for his brother's behaviour, and helps them find articles in the town's old newspapers.

The second time they meet her she's crouched over a lifeless body in an abandoned warehouse near the sea. She smiles at them, and suddenly they're faced with the fact that the warehouse is indeed inhabited by something-- multiple somethings, in fact.

She makes her escape while the brothers are fighting to fend off a multitude of crows, toads, and cats-- "_Her familiars," says Sam, who finally realizes why there have been both mysterious human disappearances and an influx of animal life in the area. "I can see that, Sam," Dean shoots back, annoyed at being bested by one girl and a bunch of dirty, noisy animals_-- and Dean can only shoot uselessly into the looming animal life, cursing the bitch.

The third time she appears she's got Sam under some sort of spell. Dean recognizes the marks she's written in chalk around his brother's prone body from the last time they met, and he remembers the lifeless eyes of the dead guy, whose soul, according to Sam, had been transferred to an animal's body so that she could siphon off power for her magik as she needed it. _A goddamn magical battery,_ Dean thinks to himself, and damned if he's gonna let his brother become her equivalent of the Energizer Bunny.

"_She's a human; she's just somehow tapped into the latent supernatural energy here,"_ is what Sammy told him earlier, but all Dean can see is his little brother laying there, too out of it to defend himself. That's all right though. That's what older brothers are for.

She's dead before she even hits the ground, with a silver bullet through her heart.


	2. Waiting On The World To Change

\\_it's not that we don't care,  
we just know that the fight ain't fair  
so we keep on waiting  
waiting on the world to change._\\

Sam grew up believing in all the things that go bump in the night, like most little boys. Unlike most boys, however, he never grew out of that belief. Things grabbing him from under his bed, being strangled half to death by an enraged poltergeist, the mind-numbing sound of the first time he saw his father shoot down a werewolf, the backlash of the rifle as he himself shot a dryad through the heart years later-- all these cemented his belief like nothing else could. He couldn't really blame his dad for not telling him it wasn't real, when they dealt with the things on a daily basis, when John Winchester was quickly becoming a name feared throughout the supernatural world.

He didn't want to believe it, but he did.

When he was thirteen he decided he wasn't, just _wasn't_, going to believe it any more. His history teacher had said that faith was the most powerful motivator of all, and Sam knew, he _knew_, that if he ignored the monsters they'd leave him alone. Other kids weren't attacked by the monster under the bed on a weekly basis, after all. Disbelief worked for them, it had to work for him too.

He never forgot the look in his father's eyes that night, when Dean had to forcibly drag him out from under the hotel bed they were sharing because he hadn't put up a line of salt.

"What were you thinking, Sammy!" And the accusations were coming from both sides, from all around him, and all he could say was _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'll never do it again._

He kept that promise until he couldn't handle it anymore. Then he ran for Stanford, away from his family, away from the monsters, the poltergeists, from all things supernatural.

He broke that promise hoping that he'd never need it again-- no more hunting, no more fear-- but the evil followed him. He broke that promise until the day Dean appeared back in his life, and then he never broke it again.

Because waiting for the world to change was one thing, and helping it along was another thing entirely.


	3. Rock of Life

\\_It's like a stranger in my hand (the baby is crying)  
There comes a time when the boy must leave (get up)  
And the man has to enter  
For the soul to understand (all of the changes)  
As if it ain't hard enough this life I'm living in  
I was caught with my guard down  
When the world came knocking._\\

Fire has always been a central idea in Sam's life. "Mommy died in a fire," his big brother told him, when he was old enough to understand the words, if only just a little.

Fire took his mother away from him, he thinks often, but it's abstract, no emotion attached to the idea. After all, when you grow up with no mother, how can you really, truly miss their presence?

What he does know is fire keeps him warm. It's the first thing he learns about it. When he's too small to be left alone and their father has nowhere to leave them for the night, they set up camp near the road, start a bonfire, draw a saltline around their camp, and John tells Dean to watch Sammy until he comes back. Dean keeps the fire going by heaping logs on it whenever Sam starts to shiver in the encroaching night. The warmth makes Sam feel safe, even later, when he realizes he never is.

He learns also that fire kills, cleanses. _Salt and burn, little brother,_ Dean tells him when he asks what they're going to do with the bones of the poltergeist he's unearthed. And _salt and burn_ soon becomes his new mantra, his words to live by. Powerful words, to sever connections.

_Salt and burn,_ he thinks, when he walks out the door at eighteen, his father yelling after him that he can stay gone. _Salt and burn._

He's never feared fire. It's comforted him, helped him, cleansed him, but never gone against him.

It isn't until he opens his eyes to see his dead girlfriend pinned to the ceiling that he learns to hate it.


	4. Superstition

\\_Very superstitious, nothin more to say,  
Very superstitious, the devils on his way,  
Thirteen month old baby, broke the lookin glass,  
Seven years of bad luck, good things in your past._\\

They head to Indiana, drawn by the newspaper clippings reporting a rash of mysterious accidents, mysterious disappearances, mysterious deaths. It's Sam who finds the connection, surfing through online newspapers with practiced ease. Every one of the _mysterious whatever's_, as Dean comes to call them, somehow involves a little boy, Eric Andrews.

Somehow they end up back in the priest outfits, Dean's not sure how. But it gets them in the house, and talking to Eric under the guise of recruitment for a new after-school program at the local church.

"He's been holed up in his room all day, fathers. He won't tell me what's wrong. Is there anything you can do?" Charlene Andrews asks them. Sam and Dean share a look.

When they finally get the kid talking he shouts at them. "It's all my fault! I did it, it was me!"

Dean shoots Sam a glance, like _go on, do something, use those puppy eyes of yours_. Sam raises an eyebrow at him, but says, "What's your fault, Eric?"

"Everything!" the boy shouts at him. "It's my bad luck!"

"Hold on a minute." Dean interrupts. "Your _what?_"

"My bad luck!" Eric reiterates. "I broke a mirror, and now I'm having seven years of bad luck! Everyone knows that!"

When they get back to the Impala there is a moment of silence before both brothers burst into laughter.

"Seven years of bad luck, that takes the cake right there," Dean snorts, starting up the car.

"I dunno, Dean, maybe we should look into it. Stranger things have happened." Sam manages through his own laughter, shaking his head even as he says it.

"That's gotta be the oldest superstition ever, Sam." His brother retorts. "No reason why it should suddenly come true now."

"We said the same thing about Bloody Mary at first." And now Sam is serious, laughter gone. Little kids aren't the only people his puppy-dog eyes work on.

"Yeah, yeah. So we'll look into it, all right?" Dean concedes, still not buying it.

Two days later, when he sees his own reflection staring back at him with a decidedly creepy, malicious grin on its face, that's when he decides maybe they're on to something.


	5. Pilgrim

\_Pilgrim  
Where's your head at?  
Are you paying the birds to sing?  
Meet me, on the true path  
I'll be dizzy from growing wings._\

It's been a long night of hunting demonspawn, and all Dean can think about as they head back to the Impala, bruised and bloody, is getting some shut-eye sometime in the near future.

They're on their way towards to the nearest town to check into a motel for the night (and hopefully the next day, get some rest, thinks Dean), when Sam turns to him and says, "So there're rumours of strange lights in the forest near this town in Montana."

Dean shoots a look at him, already knowing where this is going and not liking it one bit. "So?"

"So if we find a place to crash, catch a few hours sleep, it's close enough that we can make it there by nightfall."

"Sam," says Dean. "Hold up, dude. We need to stop for a while, rest up. Take it easy."

He can see his brother's jaw tighten out of the corner of his eye. "Dean, people are in danger out there."

"We've been goin' for a week straight now, Sammy. We're not going to be any good to anyone if we get killed for being stupid."

Sam looks as if he's swallowed something foul, as if he thinks his brother is betraying him. "Look," says Dean. "I get that you want to find Dad. I also get that you want to kill anything between us and that damned demon. But that doesn't mean that you gotta work yourself raw, dude. Get some sleep once in a while, you know?"

But Sam's not looking at him, not really listening either, he's digging out the map. "Here," he says, pointing. "It's right here, Dean. We can make it by tomorrow." _Before more people get hurt,_ he doesn't say.

Dean exhales loudly through his nose, frustrated. "Sam--"

"Just drive, Dean." Sam's voice is hard, cold. Unyielding.

Dean stares at him a moment, not speaking. Then, angrily cranking up the volume on _Jukebox Hero_, he drives.


	6. Brothers On A Hotel Bed

_No longer easy on the eyes but these wrinkles masterfully disguise  
The youthful boy below who turned your way and saw  
Something he was not looking for: both a beginning and an end  
But now he lives inside someone he does not recognize  
When he catches his reflection on accident._

The motel they stop at is the only one for miles in any direction, much less the one they're going. It's an oasis of fast food and gas and rest in the never-ending jungle of highways and back roads between Austin and Dallas, and they're certainly paying for it.

_Damned hick town in the middle of nowhere_, Sam can hear his brother muttering, and _fucking twenty cents higher a gallon than the city, what the hell_, and most importantly, as they limp into the room they've booked for the night, _only one fucking bed, damnit, what is this._

Sam is the one who's sustained the most damage from their latest hunt, and they both know it. Dean acknowledges the fact with a quick glance around the room and a muttered, _I'll take the floor._

Sam knows exactly how long that will last when he realizes the floor isn't even carpeted, just hard, cold cement. He knows Dean knows it too, but still his brother pulls out the sleeping bag and starts unrolling it.

"Dean," Sam starts, _it's a king, we can share_, he means to say, but he knows it'll sound too touchy-feely, too chick-flick moment, too _dude, we're not gonna hafta hug, are we?_ They've done it before, shared a bed when the going got rough. But not since Stanford.

They haven't done a lot of things since Stanford.

"Get some sleep, Sam." Dean is, as always, avoiding the issue, and Sam is too tired to argue right then.

Dean spends the first hour tossing and turning, cursing under his breath at the hard floor. Finally, Sam turns over to peer at Dean through the darkness. "Dude, shut the hell up. I'm trying to sleep."

"Yeah, well that's great, you sleeping in the only bed and all. I swear this is worse than not sleeping at all." His brother huffs an irritated breath and sits up sharply. Sam hears him shuffle around, hears his muffled curses as he bumps into the nightstand, hears something being dragged towards the bed. Through the gloom he makes out the vague outline of the only chair in the room, and he sees Dean settle himself in it with a tired groan.

After that Sam manages to catch a few hours of sleep. He's woken again by Dean's angry mutterings as he shifts in the chair, trying to get comfortable.

"Dude, just get in the bed," Sam mutters blearily, not happy at being awoken. His broken rib aches, he has a headache, even his feet hurt.

"With you already in it? Sorry Sammy, but that bed hardly fits your jolly green giant body, let alone both of us." Dean replies after a moment.

"You'll fit." Sam says, reaching out to grab his brother's hand, tugging. Dean is warm under his fingers, and Sam is reminded of all those bygone days after he'd had his teenage growth spurt when Dean had refused to sleep in the same bed as him because he always ended up on the floor come morning.

"I swear Sam, if I wake up kissing the goddamned concrete I will totally kick your ass." But he's already ceding to the taller man's pull. "Shove over, bitch." Dean says, throwing back the covers. Sam shivers as the cool predawn air bathes his skin, but it's soon replaced by solid heat as his brother climbs in.

The two twist around, trying to find a comfortable spot and yet still leave breathing space for the other. They finally end up sort of mashed together, but at least Dean no longer feels the crick in his neck and Sam isn't hurting any more than he already has been.

After a moment of silence in which each listens to the other breathe, _in, out, pained hitch of breath, slow exhale,_ Dean says, "We are never talking about this, ever."

Sam can only huff a laugh, and that is something he lets himself do, even if it hurts.

"I mean it, man. Completely off-limits, you hear me?"

"Sure, Dean."

And if he laughs a little when they wake up the next morning and Dean is half-on half-off the bed because Sam has, as usual, sprawled every which way possible, well, it's only fair.


	7. Camisado

\\_This is the scent of dead skin on a linoleum floor  
This is the scent of quarantine wings in a hospital  
It's not so pleasant. And it's not so conventional  
It sure as hell ain't normal, but we deal, we deal  
The anesthetic never set in and I'm wondering where  
The apathy and urgency is that I thought I phoned in  
It's not so pleasant. And it's not so conventional  
It sure as hell ain't normal, But we deal, we deal_\\

Dean wakes in a hospital bed, _Dr. Wilson to surgery 5 STAT_ ringing in his ears, scratchy hospital sheets irritating his skin. He opens his eyes and sees his brother sitting next to his bed in an uncomfortable hospital chair, face buried in his hands. Sam looks up sharply when Dean groans, the first words out of his mouth, "I hope you got the license plate on that truck, man."

Sam's lips twitch up in a valiant attempt at a smile. "You're all right."

"Of course I am, Sammy. It'll take more than a. . . whatever-it-was to take _me_ down." He looks his brother up and down, sees finger-shaped bruises around his throat, scratches on his face and down his arms. "You, on the other hand. . ."

"I'm fine." Sammy assures him. "Dean, it wasn't what we thought it was."

His brother shoots him a _no shit_ look. "I kinda guessed that when it hit me from behind, Sammy. Ghosts usually can't do that."

"I think it was a dryad." Sam says. "She thought we were going to hurt her tree."

Dean sighs. "Great. So why's she murdering people, if she's not the vengeful ghost of that murdered baroness or whatever?"

"I don't know." Sam says, and something in his eyes shifts. "I'm just glad you're all right."

"Oh god, can we not do this now?" He knows where this is going. There's only two places Sammy's mind goes when Dean gets hurt, as in seriously hurt: chick-flick, or that other place that neither he nor Dad will listen to. From the way Sammy's face gets that determined expression instead of looking sheepish at his remark, it is definitely _not going there_ time.

"Why are we doing this, Dean?"

_Here we go._ "Sammy, you _know_ why--"

"Yeah, I do." His little brother cuts him off, and there's something about him, something that's changed since he hit puberty and got that huge growth spurt, that puts Dean on edge. He thinks it's a combination of Sammy not hero-worshipping him as much as he used to and him going into a rebellious stage. Whatever it is, it makes Dean miss the times before, before Sam got all hung up on being _normal_. "I know why Dad does it, Dean. He's on this _useless_ crusade to find Mom's killer, but what good is it gonna do us, huh? You don't think he's screwing us over, making us grow up like this? And you just go right along with it!"

They've had this conversation before, though not usually this vocal. Usually it's in half-sentences and shared looks, and usually it's Sammy ranting about Dad to Dean, not Sammy railing on both of them.

Dean's getting a headache. "Sammy, I can't talk about this right now, okay?"

His brother glares at him. "Well, when _are_ we going to talk about?"

"How about 'never'?" Dean says, and it comes out harsher than he would have liked, but Sammy has been wearing on his last nerve for a while now.

Sammy's eyes grow cold. "Fine," he snaps, and his voice is like a thousand lashes on Dean's back. "Forget it." He stands, and is out the door before Dean can come up with a reply. Not that he'd have found one, given all the time in the world.

Dean doesn't quite understand why his little brother is so fixated on the mythical _normal_, but he does know that Sammy won't back off for long. He knows it's only a matter of time before things come to a head for them, and that something is going to break when it does.

He wishes he knew how to stop it.


	8. Nemo

\\_This is me for forever  
One of the lost ones  
The one without a name  
Without an honest heart as compass_\\

Dean knows he's damaged goods. He's not someone who easily falls into a certain category. He's more than a brother to Sam, less than a son to his father. Hell, he practically _raised_ Sammy from the crib, because their father was never around to do much but tell him _watch over Sammy, Dean, keep him safe,_ before he was out the door on another hunt.

He doesn't define himself the way other people define themselves. He doesn't really see himself as his own person, but more _this is Sammy's_ and _this is Dad's_ and _this is Mom's_. He'd do anything for his family, because he's _theirs_, totally and completely. He's his father's soldier, his brother's protector, his mother's son. His mother's avenger.

His life began and ended on the night of the fire. He'd do anything for his family, because they're all he has left, the only thing he can cling to in a fractured world.

Dean just wonders why he isn't the same to them.


	9. Prevent This Tragedy

\_Here we are again with handguns for hearts  
They had a master plan, wanted to tear us apart  
Nothing to hold, all hope deleted  
Our demise has been completed now  
Nowhere left to go but down_\

The thing is, they both know how it will play out. They both know the demon's after Sammy, though Dean denies it vehemently if it's ever brought up, unwilling to believe it and lay the options out in front of them, out in the open.

But Sammy is stubborn, has always been that way, whether it's about what he wants for dinner (Dean's Lucky Charms, for god's sake), what he wants for his life (Stanford, white picket fence, 2.5 kids, normal, _safe_), or what he wants for his family, what he's willing to do for them, no matter what he may say to the contrary (and Dean is very carefully _not going there_).

_Promise me,_ his eyes say. "Don't do anything stupid," his lips say.

"Yeah, yeah." Dean assures. "I won't. You know me, dude."

_I do,_ Sammy's eyes say. _I know you._

Yeah, well, Dean knows himself too, and he also knows Sammy, and he knows what it's eventually gonna come to. The demon wants Sammy, Sammy wants him and Dad safe, and Dean. . . He just wants Sam safe. He'd do anything for that; let Sammy go before, let himself go now.

Everything else can go to hell.


	10. One Headlight

\_Well it smells of cheap wine and cigarettes  
This place is always such a mess  
Sometimes I think I'd like to watch it burn  
I'm so alone, and I feel just like somebody else  
Man, I ain't changed, but I know I ain't the same  
But somewhere here in between the city walls of dyin' dreams  
I think her death it must be killin' me_\

Nothing is forever. Dean learned that first when he watched Sammy's nursery and their mother go up in flames twenty-two years ago, and again when Sam walked out of their life to chase his dream of normal. He only finds out later that Sammy wants to be a lawyer. He finds it funny, that his little brother wants to bend the truth around his little finger for a living. He figures Sam would be good at it; he certainly is at bending Dean to his every whim when he wants to.

Nothing is forever. Sam knows that as well as Dean does. He taught that to his big brother the night he left for Stanford, though he'll never know it. He learned it himself the night Dean brought him back from Jericho, the night of Jess' death. He thought Stanford was it for him. Jess was the one, he was finally going to have a normal, safe, constant existence.

Then the demon took that away from him, and the longer he's hunting it the more he realizes, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he won't be going back to school. Stanford seems more like an illusion to him the more time he spends back with Dean, a flowery, magnificently whitewashed palace of dreams come true. But the reality is Sam's ballroom clock has struck midnight, his fairy godmother was never there in the first place, and the glass slippers are cutting right to the bone.

So he gradually forgets about the ball, remembers only the beautiful, shining princess, and slowly tries to piece the glass shards of his life back together for the second time. Only this time he's not a stranger in a strange land; this time, he has help from the beginning from someone who loves him, and that makes all the difference.

_Forever is boring,_ his brother once told him.

He thinks, maybe, that Dean's right.


	11. Cat's In The Cradle

\\_And he was talking 'fore I knew it, and as he grew,  
He'd say, "I'm gonna be like you, dad.  
You know I'm gonna be like you."  
And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon,  
Little boy blue and the man in the moon.  
"When you coming home, dad?" "I don't know when,  
But we'll get together then.  
You know we'll have a good time then."_\\

Dean had always wanted to be like his father. When he was little, after the fire, he thought his dad was the coolest dad ever-- John killed the boogeyman, and the monsters under the bed and in his closet. He protected them.

_Mommny's gone to heaven,_ Dad had told him, but he was always away, always looking for something, and Dean knew the monsters had taken his mommy and that Dad was going to get her back.

When he was older he realized the monsters weren't going to give his mommy back. He asked if he could go and help his father look--_Mommy always came when I wanted her._ His father would lean down so they were eye-to-eye, put his hands on Dean's shoulder, and say, carefully but firmly, _I need you to stay here and protect Sammy. Protect your brother for me, all right?_ And then he'd go on another trip, and be gone for days at a time.

Dean grew up protecting his little brother. It wasn't easy--he realized after a while that he was doing his father's job for him.

The first time he was allowed on a hunting trip with his father was the second time he failed to protect Sammy. _Stay close to him,_ John had told him as he'd handed Dean a sawed-off shotgun loaded with silver bullets.

Sammy came out of the fight against the hellhound with a broken arm, a bloody forehead and a concussion. Dean had a long gouge on his wrist like some suicide attempt gone gruesomely wrong, and dark bruises on his forearm where his father shook him for what felt like hours.

The second time--months later--he was allowed on a hunting trip, he was so careful he nearly tripped over himself to please his father. Nothing went wrong, none of them got hurt badly. Their father merely nodded at their work, and said "Let's go."

Years after, after Stanford, after the fallout, Sam gets seriously hurt during one of their gigs. Dean rails at his brother, _you're so fucking stupid, Sam, be a little more careful, you could have died._

"Careful like you?" Sammy interrupts sarcastically, indicating the ugly long gash down Dean's chest, from when he'd jumped in the way of the charging banshee. Dean glares at him, says nothing.

"Look, I'm sorry, all right?" His brother concedes after a moment of strained silence, "But these things happen, and sometimes you can't stop them."

_I sure as hell **can**,_ Dean thinks, and suddenly he wants nothing more that to put his arms around Sammy and hug him tight, because the look in his brother's eyes is lost, resigned to the fate he thinks is his. He wants to hug him, but absolutely can't bring himself to do it, just like always.

He's too much like his father after all.


	12. Long Way Home

\\_Does it feel that your life's become a catastrophe?  
Oh, it has to be for you to grow, boy.  
When you look through the years and see what you could  
Have been oh, what might have been,  
If you'd had more time._\\

The years Sam's at Stanford are the longest four years of Dean's life. He fills the time with hunting any goddamn thing he can find, but the loss of his little brother after having him in his life nearly 24/7 for eighteen years is devastating.

The first few months he nearly gets himself killed several times on routine jobs that he's done forever, and he feels twelve again when his father reams him for his failures. After that he somehow pulls it together and moves on, but Sam is always a thought in the back of his mind, a feeling of _I wonder how he's doing_ and _he's better off without us anyway_. Because he knows Sam's destined for something more than this hunt, than dying a gruesomely bloody, disregarded death in the middle of fuck-all nowhere, USA.

It's still a relief when Sam agrees to go with him to Jericho. For a moment it feels like old times, like everything is going to be okay again. Their family can be whole, or as whole as they're ever going to be. But Sam blows that feeling straight to hell, and all Dean hears is this voice from four years before echoing in his head, _you are so scared of that fade to black, of living a normal, **safe** life, that you'll just do whatever the hell Dad asks you to, no matter your chance of survival. Well I've had enough of following orders, of putting ourselves in danger for people who don't even care. I can't do this anymore._

Lies, all of them. Because Sam _can,_ he shows it with the woman in white, and again on his own crusade after Jessica's death. All he needs is a push to get him started, and Dean knows he'll never be able to stop. There are some things you can walk away from, and some things you can't. Some things you forget, and some you never can.

Bonds go both ways, and though Sam may have tried to cut the one he has with Dean, that wasn't ever an option for Dean. Family is all he has. He hasn't had a home since he was four and cradling baby Sammy in his arms, the heat of the fire licking the back of his neck like impassioned vengeance.

Somehow, though, when he's with Sam and Dad, it doesn't matter too much. Because a real, stable house may be a nice thought, but home is something only he can define. And for Dean, _home_ is just another word for _family_. It may be all he has, but it's all he needs.


	13. Remember the Tinman

\\_If you can tear down the walls  
Throw your armor away; remove all roadblocks, barricades  
If you can forget there are bandits, dragons to slay  
And don't forget that you defend an empty space  
And remember the tinman  
Found he had what he thought he lacked  
Remember the tinman  
Go find your heart and take it back._\\

Somehow, despite all that's happened, Dean expects everything to go back to normal once he and Sam are on the road again. Just like old times, he thinks, but it's not. They've got four years, the disappearance of their father, and the death of Sam's girlfriend between them now, and it's all adding up to a chasm that leaves Dean breathless just thinking about looking down into it. Sam's got walls in places Dean's never seen before, Dean's got dozens of scars that Sam was never there to witness, and he wonders if they'll ever go back to being brothers.

It hurts him because, for one weekend, he felt like he had his brother back. Then Jessica died, and though Dean wanted Sam back, he never ever wanted him like this. Sam just. . . closes in on himself. Dean snarks at him to get him riled up, _what, is it that time of the month already?_, and sometimes it works, but even then he can tell by Sam's eyes that he's never fully distracted.

When Sam starts talking about his friends back at Stanford, something clenches in Dean's stomach, but he's honestly happy, because Sam's finally coming out of it. If the reason for that is because his little brother is thinking about eventually going back there, well, he can live with that. For now. As long as Dean can see him laugh once in a while.

Then Sam gets broody again, and it hurts Dean to see him hurting and not know _why the fuck it's happening_. He knows Sam has the dreams about Jess, but he thought they'd tapered off; at least, he hadn't been any more emo than usual the past few months.

When Sam tells him about the visions it's like a slap in the face for both of them, because Dean knows, he can immediately see what this means in his little brother's mind. He laughs it off, makes an offhand remark about gambling and Vegas, but inside he knows he's just avoiding the issue.

Sam has always wanted to be _normal_, and despite his upbringing he's kept to the belief that he could be, given half the chance. When he takes that chance it blows up in his face, but when the smoke clears he's still got the same thought in his head, that he can have his _normal_ as long as he gets rid of the thing that would deny him it. He holds on to that belief through the prophetic dreams, because shit happens, and he can move on. But the visions are another story; they're like fate is laughing in his face, telling him he can never have what he wants.

He can never go back. He can never be normal, not with the visions. Dean realizes this the same way Sam does. He sees the way this little brother starts to shut down again, and he knows he has to do something about it, before Sam becomes something neither one of them wanted him to be.

They're broken, Dean knows. Nothing can fix them; not revenge, not living a happy, normal, safe life like Sam thinks he wants. He also knows people break all the time--_all the damn time_-- and damned if he's going to just let them stay like that and eventually break themselves even harder.

They're both broken, but maybe, he thinks, they can fit their shattered parts together and create a new whole.

-----

And that's it for now, guys. . Thank you for sticking with me, and be sure to check out the fanmix on my livejournal. You can find a link there on my profile. Any and all comments appreciated!


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